[Python-Dev] Branches in which to fix the SSL tests

[Martin Panter]

Currently some SSL tests in the test suite are broken by a recent
certificate change at https://svn.python.org/; see
<https://bugs.python.org/issue25940> for the bug report. The tests are
broken when the test suite is run with the “-unetwork” option enabled,
and most of the buildbots appear to be affected. (In 3.6 the tests
have temporarily been disabled as a workaround.) I have a simple patch
that subsitutes the old root certificate for the new which I would
like to commit, but I’m not sure which branches to apply it to, or
even which branches are open to normal maintainence and bug fixes.

According to Larry
<https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2015-December/142566.html>,
3.4.4 was the last bug fix release for 3.4, so I assumed the 3.4
branch should now be in security-fixes-only mode. However this branch
still seems to get a lot of non-security action, for example the most
recent bunch of changes were some work on the provisional “pathlib”
module. So firstly I would like some clarification on the status of
3.4 and what its future is.

Secondly, I would normally say a fix for the test suite isn’t really
appropriate for the older security branches. But in the bug report,
Koobs specifically requested this be fixed in 3.4 and possibly earlier
branches as well. What do others think about this?